15 LGBT Art Exhibits To Celebrate Pride Month (SLIDESHOW)

In celebration of LGBT Pride Month, we've put together a slideshow featuring 15 gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer art exhibitions on view during the month of June. From Portland to Boston and some places in between, these exhibits are hosted by museums, galleries, and community centers that are bringing LGBT art out of the closet and into the public sphere.

Check out the slideshow and tell us about any exhibitions on view in your hometowns in the comments section below.

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15 Art Exhibits for Pride Month

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Leslie + Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York City is an art space dedicated to the exhibition and preservation of LGBTQ art and artists of past and present. All year round, the works of the museum focus on the erotic, political, romantic and social aspects of the LGBTQ experience. This month, the museum is featuring an exhibit entitled The Piers: Art and Sex along the New York Waterfront, which illustrates how the gay liberation movement on the 1970s transformed the cultural and social landscape of New York. Artists exhibited include Vito Acconci, Peter Hujar, Shelley Seccombe, Ivan Galietti, and Gordon Matta-Clark.
Photo: Frank Hallam, Tava (Gustav von Will) Painting (Pier 46), 1980/2011, archival digital print from slide, 18.5x12.5", courtesy of the artist.

Although based out of San Francisco, the California LGBT Arts Alliance is hosting several art-related events in West Hollywood this month. On June 13th, the group is featuring Black is...Black Ain't: Black LGBT Identity in America Today, and on June 29th, Creating Queer Asian American Visibility Through the Arts. The first exhibition is a film presentation followed by an artist panel discussion, while the second is a presentation of artworks also followed by a panel event.

The Queer Cultural Center of San Francisco is a multiracial community organization that focuses on the artistic, economic and cultural development of San Francisco's LGBT community. As a part of its arts initiative, the QCC presents, exhibits, screens and documents queer artists' work on the multiracial aspects of the LGBT experience. This month, visitors can view ReMix: ReFraming Appropriation, an exhibit that reflects on 15 years of National Queer Arts Festival exhibitions and the centrality of the act of appropriation for artists of the recent past.
Photo: David Gremard Romero at SomArts Cultural Center.

This month, the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center will showcase the work of LGBT artists whose work has been featured in previous shows that celebrated Gay Pride. Entitled "¡Queers, Presente! 25 Años ~ 25 Artists," which opened on June 9, the exhibit will present the work of artists in a variety of mediums and who have focused on issues of social justice dating back to 1988.

ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives in West Hollywood is presenting an exhibition called Let Your Body In, a collection of works by contemporary queer artists accompanied by artworks and objects from the archives itself. The exhibit focuses on queer-feminist perspectives and the gender divisions in art collections that are dominated by depictions of men by men.
Photo: Lee Relvas, Hags, 2009. From the series "You Make Me Feel Plenty." Watercolor and gouache on paper, 15 x 20 inches. Courtesy of the artist.

The LA Gay & Lesbian Center's Advocate and Gochis Calleries is presenting an exhibition titled Gestalt, which opened earlier this month. The exhibit is an examination of identity and cultural expression through the work of two artists: the painter Andy Macasil and the sculptor Kellan Shanahan. Macasil focuses on the components of masculinity in gay subcultures while Shanahan examines the cultural rhetoric of traditional figurative sculpture.

Co-sponsored by Boston Pride, the exhibit Pride: 40 Years of Protest & Celebration will be on display until the end of the month. The pieces displayed in the exhibition showcase the immense cultural and political changes that have affected New England's LGBT communities over the decades. As a part of the exhibit, a collection of portraits taken during the 1992 Pride Celebration by Photographer Joel Benjamin, titled Fierce Pride: 1992, will also be on view. These never before exhibited portraits reflect the rich diversity of LGBT communities and the role of Pride in creating a safe space for self-expression.

On June 20th, the Houston GLBT Community Center will be hosting Hope Is Never Silent: Queer Art Across Texas. It's a traveling exhibit that aims to give voice to queer art and expand the depth of knowledge about contemporary queer culture. The group states on their Facebook page, "No pride march would be complete without celebrating its own rich artistic and avant-garde culture."

This year, the 4th Annual Joshua Tree Gay Pride Festival is operating under the theme of "Born This Way." Set for June 16th at the Art Queen complex in Joshua Tree, the festival will showcase mostly hanging art of various mediums, with some sculpture and standing art, that represents the year's theme.

Queer New York International Arts Festival is a new festival of contemporary performance and visual art that explores and broadens the concept of "queer (in) art." Running from June 7th to June 15th, the exhibition of art and performance challenges stereotyped views or ideas of "queer" and aims to act as a forum for expanding the discussion of artistic practices and varying modes of presentation. On the festival's website, the curators write they want to "break through dominant ideas that limit and marginalize queer art."

This exhibit recently ended its tour this month at Tacoma Art Museum in Washington but we had to include it anyway, because it traced the evolution of sexual identities through such a diverse range of artworks. Iconic artists like Georgia O'Keeffe and Jasper Johns were included in the collection, standing as examples of artists who explored the definitions of sexuality and gender in modern art and society.
Photo: Berenice Abbott, Janet Flanner, 1927. Photographic print, 9 1/2 x 7 3/8 inches. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of congress, Washington, D.C. Photo courtesy of Berenice Abbott/Commerce Graphics, New York.

The Julia Dean Photo Workshops gallery in Southern California is currently exhibiting a collection called Gay Pride: A Photography Exhibition by Michael Becker. The exhibit celebrates the legacy of the LA gay community since 1963, while Michael Becker presents photos he took with his camera phone in a 45-minute period of time on the eve of the Gay Pride festival last year. These images captured by the artist stand in stark contrast to the memories he and his friends shared in the 1960s.

All this month, the Chicago Urban Art Retreat Center will be presenting an exhibit of LGBTQ Art to celebrate PRIDE month in the city. Artist from within the states and beyond were recruited to show work that highlighted the social justice issues that the LGBTQ community faces. The show is curated by Dianna C. Long and assisted by Out Artists Network.

In Honor of Gay Pride Month, SoHiTek Gallery in Portland, Oregon is showing an exhibition titled F***ing Gay, a group art show focused on the stereotypes, assumptions and ambiguity surrounding the queer community. The show aims to deconstruct the origins of derogatory terms used to describe people who identify themselves as "queer." The show will feature artwork by Susie Rumsby, Ben Curtis, Ashley Shumaker, Dawn Yanagihara, and Ebin Lee.

Milwaukee's Inova/Kenilworth gallery is presenting Miller & Shellabarger: Hiding in the Light, the collaborative work of a married duo. Over the course of 20 years, Chicago-based artists Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger have created a collection of work that investigates issues of love, relationship, and mortality, while pushing their audience to address the invisible aspects of their relationship.
Photo: Seed Drawing courtesy of Western Exhibitions.